The Le Guin interviews were edited by Carl Freedman, an English professor at Louisiana State University and a Le Guin fan who argues in his introduction that her 1974 novel "The Dispossessed" "may be the most prominent and unavoidable landmark in the entiriety of modern science fiction." He's also partial to "Always Coming Home" (1985) and the 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."

Le Guin has always been articulate and enthusiastic in discussing her work and anything else that crosses her mind. She cooperated with Freedman in preparing the book and conducted an e-mail interview with him that contains this nugget: "The more I consider it, the more I see fiction writing as a preposterous enterprise."